Lesson 5: Subsurfing and Shiny Stuff

Make it Smooth

Now that our cup is built, we need to get it to where it doesn't look so 'blocky'. We do this by subsurfacing it (referred to as subsurfing in Blender).

TIP:

Subsurfing is highly demanding at render time. The subsurf creates hundreds of facets on each face of the model, making it look smooth. The more levels of subsurfing we use on an object at render time, the longer it takes to render the object. Try and keep the subsurf to the absolute minimum render level that looks good in your render. Adding more levels will not significantly improve the outcome but will slow the render way down. One exception is with reflective materials like we will be modelling here in which case the reflectance will make the sub-surfed facets create 'jagged' reflections.

To subsurf our cup, select it in object mode and go to the edit buttons:

In the Modifiers tab, click the Add Modifier button and select Subsurf from the list. Change the following settings:

1. Set Levels to 4
2. Set Render Levels to 5 (this is a high number - see the tip above)

Now press F12 and we see that our cup is looking considerably more 'cupish':

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Now we will give our cup a high gloss ceramic texture. I'm not going to cover every step of the material creation because I did that in Lesson 2. If you need a refresher, go back and look at that tutorial.

Add a new material for the cup and set a color in the Material tab by clicking the color bar next to the Col button. I set the color to Hex 000253, dark blue. Make these changes to the settings in the Shaders tab:

1. Spec. = 1.6
2. Hard = 278

Now we do something different! We are going to make our material reflective like a mirror. Click the Mirror Trans tab next to the Shaders tab. Select the Ray Mirror button and set:

1. RAYMIR slider to .25
   
2. Gloss to 1.00

Since we have changed the color of our cup to a dark color, now would be a good time to change the background of the render so we can see it better when we render it.

Click the Shading and World buttons:

In the World tab, click the upper left color bar and enter the Hex number D0CC8C to change the render background color. Press F12:

Now our cup looks nice and shiny. You could stop here, but if you observe the way a real ceramic cup looks, there are variances in the thickness of the glaze that cause smooth 'ripples in the surface. We will now model these.

Go to the texture tab and create a new texture called "MARBLE". Click the Textures button and under Texture Type, select "Marble". In the Marble tab, change the following:

1. NoiseSize = .250
2. NoiseDepth = 2
3. Turbulance=31.22
4. Nabla = 0.045

Click the material button to return to your material. In the Map Input tab, change:

1. sizeX, sizeY and sizeZ to .25
2. Select the button marked Tube.
   

Click the Map To button and change the following settings:

1. Deselect the Col button
2. Select the Nor button
3. Set the Nor slider to .03

Now we have a cup with a shiny, ripply surface: